well, in the past, users have complained about this, resulting in more recruits being generated (to the person who asked what they could do).

however, the fluctuation in recruits each season IS rather large, and it is based on open scholarships. however, i am 95% sure at one point, something changed in tark to forever (or long term at least) lower the # of recruits. it was immediately following a complain about allen i think it was (not sure), where WIS increased the # of recruits - i compared to the previous season - when i had left colorado following 5 EEs (which had never happened before at that point, now, id be less ******) - i had full carryover (0 ships the previous year) and full budget (2 seniors, so 7 openings), so i used 15K to scout the whole nation. i saved the recruits for every division and i compared the season in question to that season, and there were like 11% fewer recruits, following what i considered a normal season.

one single season of 11% recruits isnt enough to say for sure, but we had always had states hitting certain thresholds - it seemed like certain states were always breaking 100, 200, and a couple would be upper 200s or even breaking 300. but that season, it seemed like ALL states were down - like all the low 200s states were under 200, a few (like colorado, which i knew pretty well, and ohio i remember was too) were down to double digits from triple digits. the following few seasons, i watched - numbers stayed down - those states stayed under 100 or under 200.

just this year in tark, california broke 300, and i havent really been paying a heck of a lot of attention to the game for the last few years, but other than this season, it seems to me recruits have been down. i watched at least 4 more generations following the instance i described.

i really dont have a point except, there have been problems before where CS came in and made more guys, but i think there are more problems than that. this is not the first weirdness which makes it more worthwhile to push for an answer, i guess. the # of scholarships, i understand plays in, but come on - there are a THOUSAND schools. that should pretty well smooth out the open # of scholarships, wouldnt you think? i could see 10% fluctuation from one season to the next, maybe one season has more opening and the next, fewer - but i wouldnt expect to have season after season, states always hitting certain numbers, and then suddenly, no longer - for at least 4 season. and that was my colorado/texas a&m days, when i was a brand new d1 coach (so i was super into it), and when i was at the peak of my career and interest/intensity levels. no detail was too small, nothing, so im really damn near 100% positive the drop in recruits was consistent and profound. now, after about 5 seasons, i was burnt out, so i dont know if it ever returned. and considering admin had *just* admitted a problem and fixed another world (temporarily, just making more recruits), i cant believe it was just me being wrong, not then.

so anyway, it just seems to me there is something significantly wrong in that whole realm, and getting seble to take a look could be very helpful.

Given the ticket response a few months ago to the effect of "we can't change things one world at a time," I highly doubt Tark is operating under rules any different from all the worlds. It's simply based on the total number of available scholarships in the country, and at this point most worlds have enough sims that that can fluctuate wildly. I've definitely noticed that in most worlds, for whatever reason, superclasses seem to line up - ie there might be 20 or 25 sims in one level alone with 8+ players in the same class, all on the same cycle. So that year there will be a ton of recruits. I wouldn't necessarily be as likely to notice a year in which there was a distinct defecit of players, but it certainly doesn't seem out of the question...

And it's a self-perpetuating cycle. Not only because the sims will typically tend to stay on a somewhat consistent cycle, but because of the impact on human-coached teams. If we assume - probably correctly - that there are only very slight fluctuations in the number of openings amongst human-coached teams from year to year, at least on the average, then the demand for recruits is basically constant. When there are more recruits, there will be more quality recruits, so more human coaches will fill their scholarships or even consider cutting somebody to bring in another prize freshman. In a down year with fewer quality recruits, more human coaches may take walk-ons and wait for the next season instead of recruiting a lesser player. Then 4 years later there are fewer human-recruited players graduating, and now not only is there an imbalance in the sim classes, it's been exacerbated by an imbalance in the human classes.

Basically, it's not hard to believe that there are years with markedly smaller numbers of recuits. This has been the case in Knight for quite a while now, in fact, and in Tark as well. I'm not going to voluntarily tell everyone what years I think are the best for recruiting, but I will say that it's no coincidence my team in Knight has only one opening this season...

cbg, I don't doubt you when you say that CS made more recruits, but isn't that solution sort of unfair? I know that if I have carryover money from the prior season I like to FSS my state and the nearby ones that I can afford ASAP to start planning next season's recruiting. If they come along and add more recruits to a state I've already scouted isn't that giving me an advantage over someone who scouts (and pays per recruit) later?